'When we open, come in quick. And no stunts.'
'All set.'
The latch clicked. I plunged in with the door.
Across the street a dozen guns emptied themselves. Class shot from door and windows tinkled around us.
Somebody tripped me. Fear gave me three brains and half a dozen eyes. I was in a tough spot. Noonan had slipped me a pretty dose. These birds couldn't help thinking I was playing his game.
I tumbled down, twisting around to face the door. My gun was in my hand by the time I hit the floor.
Across the street, burly Nick had stepped out of a doorway to pump slugs at us with both hands.
I steadied my gun-arm on the floor. Nick's body showed over the front sight. I squeezed the gun. Nick stopped shooting. He crossed his guns on his chest and went down in a pile on the sidewalk.
Hands on my ankles dragged me back. The floor scraped pieces off my chin. The door slammed shut. Some comedian said:
'Uh-huh, people don't like you.'
I sat up and shouted through the racket:
'I wasn't in on this.'
The shooting dwindled, stopped. Door and window blinds were dotted with gray holes. A husky whisper said in the darkness:
'Tod, you and Slats keep an eye on things down here. The rest of us might as well go upstairs.'
We went through a room behind the store, into a passageway, up a flight of carpeted steps, and into a second-story room that held a green table banked for crap-shooting. It was a small room, had no windows, and the lights were on.
There were five of us. Thaler sat down and lit a cigarette, a small dark young man with a face that was pretty in a chorusman way until you took another look at the thin hard mouth. An angular blond kid of no more than twenty in tweeds sprawled on his back on a couch and blew cigarette smoke at the ceiling. Another boy, as blond and as young, but not so angular, was busy straightening his scarlet tie, smoothing his yellow hair. A thin-faced man of thirty with little or no chin under a wide loose mouth wandered up and down the room looking bored and humming Rosy Cheeks.
I sat in a chair two or three feet from Thaler's.
'How long is Noonan going to keep this up?' he asked. There was no emotion in his hoarse whispering voice, only a shade of annoyance.
'He's after you this trip,' I said. 'I think he's going through with it.'
The gambler smiled a thin, contemptuous smile.
'He ought to know what a swell chance he's got of hanging a onelegged rap like that on me.'
'He's not figuring on proving anything in court,' I said.
'No?'
'You're to be knocked off resisting arrest, or trying to make a getaway. He won't need much of a case after that.'
'He's getting tough in his old age.' The thin lips curved in another smile. He didn't seem to think much of the fat chief's deadliness. 'Any time he rubs me out I deserve rubbing. What's he got against you?'
'He's guessed I'm going to make a nuisance of myself.'
'Too bad. Dinah told me you were a pretty good guy, except kind of Scotch with the roll.'
'I had a nice visit. Will you tell me what you know about Donald Willsson's killing?'
'His wife plugged him.'
'You saw her?'
'I saw her the next second--with the gat in her hand.'
'That's no good to either of us,' I said. 'I don't know how far you've got it cooked. Rigged right, you could make it stick in court, maybe, but you'll not get a chance to make your play there. If Noonan takes you at all he'll take you stiff. Give me the straight of it. I only need that to pop the job.'
He dropped his cigarette on the floor, mashed it under his foot, and asked:
'You that hot?'
'Give me your slant on it and I'm ready to make the pinch--if I can get out of here.'
He lit another cigarette and asked:
'Mrs. Willsson said it was me that phoned her?'
'Yeah--after Noonan had persuaded her. She believes it now-- maybe.'
'You dropped Big Nick,' he said. 'I'll take a chance on you. A man phoned me that night. I don't know him, don't know who he was. He said Willsson had gone to Dinah's with a check for five grand. What the hell did I care? But, see, it was funny somebody I didn't know cracked it to me. So I went around. Dan stalled me away from the door. That was all right. But still it was funny as hell that guy phoned me.
'I went up the street and took a plant in a vestibule. I saw Mrs. Willsson's heap standing in the street, but I didn't know then that it was hers or that she was in it. He came out pretty soon and walked down the street. I
